The Most Whitewashed Character Ever

This was an amazing video! Thank you for the thorough research plus the dankest phantom memes

SamBee

I hope that one day you make a video on Phantom of the Paradise. I saw it after you mentioned it in a different video years ago, and loved it!

Pirate Arr

Same, I even read the book and just remember being super bored because a surprising amount of it takes place in the catacombs with various characters angsting and going through traps, like light-core, emo Indiana Jones? I was also in middle school.

Lauren & Tish Fox

I've watched maybe 5 hours of you describing the various intricacies of Phantom of the Opera and I'm still not sure I know what it's about

Nowhere Girl

As someone who is half Persian, thank you very much. It's been hard growing up with my race seen as whatever is most convenient to whomever I'm talking to, and this really hits a lot of points beautifully. We have lots of talk about racism, but it's been a very long time since someone has pointed out that maybe that includes people from the Middle East too.

Excellent video! I love it when something you’re working on suddenly becomes all the more relevant! I was working on a video about the Irish Civil War and all of a sudden they call an election in Ireland! :D

John D Ruddy

I have to wait to watch this until I eat a nice high-protein meal so I don't miss any of the typically brilliant asides and quips!

JM

This was a delight. So interesting, so entertaining, thanks <3

Ailsa Lillywhite

Great job Lindsay and team!

‪This is so specific to my interests that I feel like this in someway was engineered in a lab just for me. Also just wanted to say thank you to you and your team for all the great content you have made over the years that I’ve enjoyed!‬

I just love Charles Dance punching the deer so much. I have shown this to numerous people and it makes me laugh and laugh

Kristen

I REALLY REALLY liked this video

Chris Silvia

That was a long wind-up, but the pay-off was interesting.

Dean Hacker

Great video! I was watching an Asterix movie the other day in French (I’m learning), and some of the characters started doing this weird accent. Took me way to long to realize they were doing “British” accents. First time I’d been on the other end of that and it was weird.

Hankapotamus

Um...I will go $10/mo for a year if you do a Dolezals video. (Edit: While I am serious I realize that it isn't enough money on it's own to fund an entire video. @.@ Rereading that it came off a bit...much, lol.)

dkub

Absolutely love this

Leslye Headland

Been looking forward to this one. :)

Matthew Dunne

Orientalism was one of the few textbooks from college that I kept and continued rereading. It’s fantastic!

I have always been most interested in the relation of Gaston Leroux’ The Phantom of the Opera to Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness: Erik and Kurtz being geniuses & madmen, both spoken of and described as no more than voices. The mirroring language of the journey deeper into the Congo and further down beneath the Opera in terms of circles of hell from the Inferno. And then of course Christine’s with trembling fingers she discarded the mask to see “Oh horror horror horror!” Like Kurtz emphatic statement as one steps over the invisible: “The horror! The horror!” I swear there were more parallels because it just so happened I had been reading Heart of Darkness right before I reread The Phantom of the Opera back in high school, but I never knew what it means or why it means anything. I believe the stories were only published a few years apart. I always think of Heart of Darkness as a new take on what Ann Radcliffe termed a “tale of horror” (vs a “tale of terror”) wherein the horror is never explained and the chilling events take place in some romantic yet “uncivilised” distant land. But then Phantom of the Opera is a whole other beast altogether. It would more likely be a tale a terror, where all the supernatural elements and terror is explained away by wholly rational and practical methods, and in some ways like and even moreso than Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the terror is present in civilised society; it is here, lurking with us, even if the terror has come from those distant, frightful foreign lands. I have a very strange relationship and fascination with Leroux’s novel. Edit to Add: oh, and the whole torture chamber driving men mad because “It’s an AFRICAN forest!” Which greatly amuses Erik. It felt so on the nose there.

Uneducated & Enthused

Towards the ending too!

Ng Yi-Sheng

Also, great video!

CaitSeith

25:54 That's the only Phantom of the Opera I have ever watched, so I got lucky on watching a version where the Persian that wasn't whitewashed or that painted Persian culture as barbaric or degenerate (if just by omitting many details from the backstory). Erik was just a murderer, the Persian was the chief of police who mistook a dead body for Erik's, got celebrated and pensioned for that, and found Erik alive in Paris. Erik swore he was a reformed man and made a deal with the Persian to not reveal himself if the later just leave him alone; but then the murder happened and the Persian has been chasing after him since then. By the way, at the end Erik freed everyone and while they escaped he killed himself by playing his pipe organ so loud that his lair crumbled and crushed him to death.

CaitSeith

Just noticed at 7m35s you didn't blur out the painting. Don't want Youtube to pitch a fit about it so wanted to warn you. Great video!

Danielle Paterno

Great analysis Lindsay! I was excited when I saw you were going to be discussing Susan Kay's Phantom because I remember my big Phantom phase and reading it in middle school. I'm curious what you thought of Kay's decisions regarding the more...out there changes to the Erik/Christine storyline.

I assume that the Nickleback example was chosen specifically so you had an excuse to work in the 'look at this graph' video, which I 100% approve of because honestly I keep waiting for an excuse to work Joy Division into a conversation so I can shove the conversation into Ian Curtis riding a rollercoaster

Matt Cramp

"Erik, why do you have a torture chamber in your house?

Lindsay Ellis

Flashback to Loose Cannon, it was nice

There is no director with highs and lows as great as Dario Argento ever in film history. Jennifer Connelly im sorry you met right in the middle. He was good and you were young and there was a monkey there to make things weird. But not that kind of weird. At least I hope not that kind of weird. *Edit: to patreon for making that my final thought

Ryan Carroll

Just mainline that shit, that's wtf I'm talking about, thank you, well done team!

Eli Bildirici

What tier can I sub to that gets Serra Elinsen to publish her Phantom book already?

1) Props to Angelina for the animations. 2) Olly reading as The Phantom was brilliant. I feel like the entire time he was thinking, "Could this use more ham? I can do more ham. Unless that was too much ham. Nah. There is no such thing as too much ham. Shame this is an audio recording, because I would like to chew on some scenery. You know, as a chaser for all of the ham."

I remember the first time I read the book and being so confused as to who the Persian was and why was he not in the musical. Granted, theres a lot of stuff that uh, didnt translate to the musical for better or worse.

I loved the animation, and the Frasier poster had me in stitches. Great video, thank you Lindsay!

Paige Lansky

the animations are awesome!

SkaveRat

I joined your patreon for this. Keep it up Lindsey